Our ideal home

We moved to Chester in August 2003. As we were only able to spend two weekends house hunting, before we were due to move to Chester, we decided to rent, initially, rather than buy. Renting, we felt, would give us a better feel for the area. The only property that we had been tempted to look at was called Blue Pig Cottage. We both liked it but we both also had reservations about it. It did not quite tick all the boxes and rather than saddle ourselves with a property which we might later regret buying we decided that Blue Pig Cottage was not for us. We made the right decision as I have never regretted not buying Blue Pig Cottage. Having found a suitable house to rent, we settled ourselves into it, had a holiday then set about looking for a house to buy. Here is our wish list of what we wanted from our new home:

• An older property with character - this we managed to achieve buying a late Victorian cottage. The previous owners have artexed some or the ceilings and put up beams. Neither of these features are Victorian but we can not afford to remove them. The beams do feel as if they have added character even if they are out of place.
• Detached - this was an essential as I have had enough of noise from the neighbours. So the cottage is detached. It was originally two semi-detached farm workers cottages that have now been knocked into one cottage, by a previous owner.
  
• A garage -yes, the cottage had a garage but it was largely made of asbestos and had to be demolished and rebuilt before we had use of it, which meant that we had no garage and had to buy a shed to house our garage items. Four years after the garage was built the shed still stands on what should be our vegetable garden.
• In a village with a pub within walking distance - we are on the outskirts of a village and the nearest pub must be forty five minutes walk away along an unlit road with no pavement. I think that we failed on that one.
• Property in need of decoration but not building work - the decoration was old and not to our taste so we were alright there but the minor building job which the estate agent suggested turned out to be a major project.
• A reasonable size garden - this we have achieved, although when we moved here it was more a plot of land being mainly lawn and trees.
• Two separate reception rooms -I would rather have to two smaller rooms than one large room. Easier to heat in the winter.
• Four bedrooms -one room to use as a study. If husband's junk is not contained in one room it ends up all over the house. That leaves us with three bedrooms. Our intention was that the family could come to stay with us. How wrong could we be? If you move from south to north the family do not come to visit you. You have to visit them.
• Two bathrooms - one for us and one for the visitors. What visitors?
  
• Handy for shops and conveniences but a quiet location - there is no shop in the village. It probably isn't really a village. It is a long walk to anywhere including a bus stop. I have to admit that we are quite isolated, but most of the time it is quiet apart from the hum of farm machinery. You do need a car to live where we do. Both Chester and Ellesmere Port are only a few miles away and we are on the door step of the Wirral and Wales.

The only item on our wish list that we did not mange to achieve was the location. I would like to be able to walk to shops etc but it took six months of looking to find the cottage by which time we were both thoroughly fed up with the rented house and we realised that we were going to have to compromise on something.

The winds of change

This photograph of the neighbour's leafless cherry tree is the fourth photograph from my fourth folder of photographs.

French Fancy has tagged me to post and write about the fourth photograph in my fourth folder. I am afraid that it is nowhere near as attractive a photo, as the one that she posted herself.

I am now, not quite sure why I took this photo, but I do remember that I took it with the intention that it would be viewed along side the photo below left, which is of the same tree taken when the leaves had started to turn but before they had started to drop. The photo of the tree in leaf was taken last Autumn, just one week earlier. In between the two photos we had a couple of very windy days which made all the difference and as usual all of the leaves were blown onto our patio. Likewise in the Spring all of the pink blossom gets blown onto our patio.

Now I need to pass the tag onto four bloggers, who are as follows:

akelamalu

fat frumpy & fifty

strawberry jam anne

the dotterel

Cheshire Life

What do you think of when Cheshire is mentioned? A Cheshire cat, Cheshire cheese or something else? There does not appear to be anything typical or distinctive about Cheshire. Perhaps this is because in the past the county has been re-arranged with towns added and taken away. So when a move to Chester was mooted I did not know what to expect. It was one place that I had never been to. My husband started work in Chester in April 2003, commuting weekly, from Surrey, and staying in a B&B. By June he had found himself a flat and I was able to pay my first visit to Chester. It was early evening when I caught my first glimpse of Chester. The day's shoppers had gone home and the evening's pubbers and clubbers were yet to come out. It seemed very pleasant with its' sandstone cathedral, Roman ruins, ancient walls and mock Tudor buildings - built by the Victorians actually. At the time I was really a visitor and Chester is really a city for visitors. I see things differently now that it is my home.

My initial impressions of the countryside around Chester were of its' flatness by comparison with the undulating North Downs area of Surrey that we lived in. Yes, the west of Cheshire is flat whereas the east is hilly. In between is the stunning Cheshire Plain. A typical Cheshire house is built of the local, red and black Cheshire brick, with a Welsh slate roof. There are a number of old black and white 'Tudor' style houses around the county and sandstone was an equally popular choice of building material.

There is a glossy monthly magazine published here called Cheshire Life - cover photo is to the right. When we first moved here I subscribed to it but soon found that it contained more articles about the high life of Cheshire's socialites photographed in DJs and evening dresses and adverts for expensive houses than it did articles and features about the towns and villages of Cheshire.

You can not live in this area without realising that you are on the edge of WAG land. For those of you that do not live in the UK a WAG is the term used to describe the wives and girlfriends of sportsmen. It was first coined to described the wives and girlfriends of football players. Football is a way of life here. Our immediate neighbours support Everton, Liverpool and Manchester United, which are all not far away. I quietly support my own team - Hull City. Surrey is devoid of top flight professional football teams. The big teams are all up in London.

In general the shops and stores here were smaller than their cousins down south, when we first moved here, but some have been enlarged and new shopping centres opened in the time that we have been living here. I had never seen the discount shops T K Maxx, Matalan or Poundland until we moved to Chester. Such shops simply did not exist in Surrey when we lived there and I rarely shop in them. There are one or two shops from the Surrey area that I miss but I have learnt to live without them.

The accent is a softer form of Scouse. Thanks to the Beatles I can understand it, but I do sometimes have problems with some of the colloquialisms. And there were times, when we were renting, that I felt as if I had moved to a foreign country.

One of the nice things about Cheshire is its love of gardens. The climate, which benefits from Cheshire's western location, is gentle enough to allow most plants to grow outdoors in the summer although they may need protection in the winter. There are several gardens in Cheshire that are open to the public and we have our very own flower show at Tatton Park.

Righting a wrong

We have been decorating the snug/dining room. One end of the room is a small living room, which we use mainly in the winter, hence the name the snug and the other end is the dining room. Yes, I know we only did two years ago but unfortunately we painted it the wrong colour. The room was a bit dark so we tried to make the room as light as possible by painting the walls beige, which looked alright initially but by the time we had added predominantly beige curtains and a beige sofa, I decided that the overall effect was a bit insipid. The carpet is green and the curtains have some pink and green in them. My first thoughts were to injection some colour into the room by having the sofa re-covered in a pink fabric. I soon realised that this was a rather expensive solution to the problem and decided that a less expensive option would be to paint the walls pink. That would be easy, I thought. No need to worry about the ceiling or the woodwork. But I have still had to pack away all the glasses and china that we keep in the unit in the dining room together with all of the ornaments. Remove bits and pieces (clutter) which find their way into which ever room we are using at the time and take down the curtains plus the curtain pole. All of which took several hours last week. This weekend we have concentrated on the snug end of the room.

When I say we have been decorating I am using the royal 'we' as although the painting itself is a joint effort. My husband paints the walls with a roller and I paint the tops and bottoms of the walls plus the fiddly bits, which takes me about four times as long as it takes my husband. I seem to have drawn the short straw, as usual but at 5' 4" to his 6' 1" I am vertically challenged where using a paint roller is concerned. So really, I have been decorating. And whilst I was busy with a paint brush my husband occupied himself fixing draught excluders to the front and back doors in an attempt to keep out the pesky mice. The room has now been transformed to a delicate shade of pink (similar to the pink of the butterfly below) and I have spent this afternoon cleaning it up and putting things back. It does look better. The room now seems to have more character as we have left the chimney breast beige.

I have also chosen floor tiles for the conservatory and booked the tiler, and looked at floor tiles, units and counter tops for the utility room.

Now on a different note Moments from Suburbia has kindly given me this pretty award. Thank you Suburbia. Do visit her blog and leave a comment. This is the blurb that goes with it and needs to be posted alongside the award on your blog.

Blogs who receive this award are 'exceedingly charming' say it's authors. This award is a fine one because it focuses not on the glory and fanfare of blogging, but on the proximity to one another through this online world. 'This blog invests and believes in the proximity - nearness in space, time and relationships. These blogs are exceedingly charming. These kind bloggers aim to find and be friends. They are not interested in prizes or self-aggrandizement! Our hope is that when the ribbons of these prizes are cut even more friendships are propagated. Please give more attention to these writers! Deliver this award to eight bloggers who must chose eight more and include this clever-written text into the body of their award.'

It is difficult to choose eight blogs to give the award to as I think that you all deserve it. So I am going to award it to the first eight that leave a comment. Hope that that is alright. Brain has become too tired and confused choosing tiles and counter tops!